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Cover of The Jungle Book

Children's

The Jungle Book

Seven fable-like tales about jungle animals in India and the humans who live on the edges of their realm.

First published
1894
Length
50,991 words
Reading time
About 3 hr 33 min
Language
English (US)

About the book

The Jungle Book is a short collection of stories published by Kipling in various magazines between 1893 and 1894. Kipling spent both his early years and his late teenage years in India, and that upbringing is front and center in these stories—despite them being written while he was living in Vermont, in the United States.

The stories are fable-like, with most of them centering on the lives of anthropomorphised jungle animals and a few focused on human characters in India. The stories were popular from the start, and have since been adapted in countless ways in print, screen, and other media.

First published 1894; the Read4Max reading text contains approximately 50,991 words arranged in 9 navigable sections.

About the author

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) is described by Wikidata as English writer and poet (1865–1936), with citizenship or national association recorded as United Kingdom and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Recorded occupations include writer, poet, novelist, war correspondent, children's writer, and autobiographer. Languages recorded for Rudyard Kipling include English. Wikidata lists The Jungle Book, Kim, If—, The Second Jungle Book, Just So Stories, and Gunga Din among Rudyard Kipling's notable works. Open Library identifies Captains Courageous as a leading work in its author record. Open Library catalogs 4473 works under this author record. The Read4Max catalog currently includes Just So Stories, Kim, and The Jungle Book under Rudyard Kipling's authorship.

Reading options

  • A complete text with direct section navigation in the browser reader.
  • A downloadable EPUB for phones, tablets, desktop reading apps, and compatible ereaders.
  • Book and contributor metadata are checked against the source edition before indexing.

Themes and ideas

  • Short stories
  • Animals
  • Jungles
  • India
  • Jungle animals
  • Mowgli (Fictitious character)
  • Adventure stories, English
  • Feral children

Table of contents

Open reader
  1. Epigraph
  2. The Jungle Book
  3. Mowgli’s Brothers
  4. Kaa’s Hunting
  5. “Tiger! Tiger!”
  6. The White Seal
  7. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”
  8. Toomai of the Elephants
  9. Her Majesty’s Servants